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I live in the Midwest which is Big Ten country. Once conference play starts virtually every Big Ten game is televised in my region and I commit myself to try and watch all of them. I have three televisions set up as some games are being played at the same time. I have no bias or affiliation to any Big Ten team as I am a lifelong Notre Dame fan (I include ND games in my viewing schedule as well). My comments and reports are qualified only by my love of the game and an extreme commitment to watching and following Big Ten football.

Sunday, August 23, 2015

I’m back for another season as long as
circumstances allow. Like past seasons, I’ll compare my predictions to other
on-line prognosticators with focus on the results, and even more focus on
trying to beat the spread for a profit (FTC dollars, of course).

Again like last season, the comparisons will
involve conference games only. I’ll still include Notre Dame in my predictions,
but the results for ND games will be excluded in the comparisons with my
competition. So there will be 56 conference predictions and 11 Notre Dame
predictions. I’ll also post the results of everyone’s predictions and the standings,
broken down into the same categories as last season with the main emphasis on
FTC dollars earned.

And as usual, rather than
creating a new way of articulating similar content, I may recycle portions of prior
season’s posts where applicable.

I’ll be making some minor changes but, for the
most part, the same concept as last season.

ATS

Explanation:

At the beginning of each
season I Google “big ten football week 1 predictions” and try to find
reporters/ bloggers/ analysts,-whatever you want to call them, that offer
predicted scores for all Big Ten games. I compare the weekly (conference games
only) predictions of these professionals along with my own predictions and
maintain a ranking of our performances throughout the year. But since most avid
college football fans can correctly predict the winner about 75% of the time, I
make things more challenging by comparing the predictions ATS. The results and
rankings are broken down into five categories. The final standings from last
season are listed under the “ATS Stats ‘14” tab at the top of my posts. The
categories are explained at the bottom of the stats page and will also be included
each time I post the weekly standings.

The only category that really
matters, though, is the “play” category. The four other categories will be
considered useful only for statistical analysis. Here is how I’ve defined the
“play” category in the past:

PLAYS- I’m not promoting any type of illegal
activity here but if you happened to be in a Las Vegas sports bar you might
want to reconsider making a “play” on a game where your handicapped number
varies from the spread by only a few points. I think a seven point or more
differential should instill a reasonable amount of confidence. This category
tracks such instances.

I’m still not promoting any
illegal activity, but I am going to be direct in stating that the predictions
that fall under this category are the ones that I would wager on if I lived in
Vegas. That’s the system. Seven points or more differential, play it; less than
seven, back off. So the “play” category will be ranked by who does the best
financially. But since I don’t live in Vegas and can’t afford a weekly plane
ticket to get there, and none of my chosen competitors live in Vegas, we’ll
have to use “funny” money. You know, pretend type monopoly dollars.I’ll call them FTC dollars. The “play”
category standings will be featured in the “ATS” results section of my posts as
the only one that matters in terms of winning this little contest of mine.

In order to maintain a level
playing field of competition, I’ll be comparing only the conference games
because I won’t be predicting any non-conference games, although my chosen
competitors will. (Too many non-conference teams for me to keep up with now
that there are 14 schedules to consider). And I am the only one who steps
outside of the conference by predicting Notre Dame games (except for week 1). I’ll
list my Notre Dame results separately.

As I pointed out in past
seasons, my method is to make my predictions on Sunday, before I look at the
spreads, to keep from being influenced subconsciously. As far as I know, none
of the other contestants do this. Therefore I make one disclaimer: If a report
comes out during the week (after Sunday) that there is an issue involving the
starting quarterback (an injury I might not have known about) or the coach
(health issues, scandal, etc.), I won’t count the game.Occasionally I might predict a tie, which is
the equivalent of a “pick em”.

This basically the same
explanation can be found on the “FTC $ Q&A” tab at the top of my posts
along with examples of what constitutes a “play” and a definition of FTC
dollars.